Cult of Mac has posted the transcript to a completely fascinating interview with former Apple CEO John Sculley. (Here’s the audio version for download too!) Some of you might remember him as the guy brought in by Steve Jobs and the guy that helped push Jobs out. Some of you will recall the famous line Jobs used to court Sculley who was president of Pepsi at the time: “Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life, or do you want to come with me and change the world?”
Most tech blogs are focusing on Sculley’s admiration for Jobs and the enormous amount of praise he doles out in the interview. I thought it was more interesting to read Sculley talk about Apple’s competitors and influences. Here’s a clip where he discusses Jobs’ admiration for Sony:
The one that Steve admired was Sony. We used to go visit Akio Morita and he had really the same kind of high-end standards that Steve did and respect for beautiful products. I remember Akio Morita gave Steve and me each one of the first Sony Walkmans. None of us had ever seen anything like that before because there had never been a product like that. This is 25 years ago and Steve was fascinated by it. The first thing he did with his was take it apart and he looked at every single part. How the fit and finish was done, how it was built.
I almost forgot what a “premium” company Sony used to be. While it still offers some of the best consumer electronics in the world, the competition has caught up and Sony products don’t have the same mystique they used to. Sculley also discussed what went wrong at Sony:
You can see today the tremendous problem Sony has had for at least the last 15 years as the digital consumer electronics industry has emerged. They have been totally stove-piped in their organization. The software people don’t talk to the hardware people, who don’t talk to the component people, who don’t talk to the design people. They argue between their organizations and they are big and bureaucratic.
Sony should have had the iPod but they didn’t — it was Apple. The iPod is a perfect example of Steve’s methodology of starting with the user and looking at the entire end-to-end system.
To cap things off, here’s a bit where Sculley talks about Jobs’ goal of simplifying complexity. He contrasts it to Microsoft’s approach with the Zune media player:
He’s a minimalist and constantly reducing things to their simplest level. It’s not simplistic. It’s simplified. Steve is a systems designer. He simplifies complexity.
If you are someone who doesn’t care about it, you end up with simplistic results. It’s amazing to me how many companies make that mistake. Take the Microsoft Zune. I remember going to CES when Microsoft launched Zune and it was literally so boring that people didn‘t even go over to look at it… The Zunes were just dead. It was like someone had just put aging vegetables into a supermarket. Nobody wanted to go near it. I’m sure they were very bright people but it’s just built from a different philosophy. The legendary statement about Microsoft, which is mostly true, is that they get it right the third time. Microsoft’s philosophy is to get it out there and fix it later. Steve would never do that. He doesn’t get anything out there until it is perfected.
It’s really a fantastic interview that covers all sorts of topics. I’m completely fascinated with Steve Jobs and it was interesting to see how he’s perceived by a former colleague. Not that I don’t want you to stay here, but please, please, please make some time to read the entire interview.
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